The present invention relates to an automatic battery exchanging system, and particularly to an automatic battery exchanging system for use with an automatic guided vehicle (hereinafter AGV) system.
Usually, conveyance and carrying are automatically carried out by AGV's in an automated factory. These AGV's utilize batteries as a power source for their drive systems and all operations are carried out by instructions from a host computer.
A problem with the AGV systems in automated factories is that when the battery is excessively discharged, i.e., to under a final discharge voltage, the AGV will come to a stop and the automatic operation is interrupted.
In order to solve this problem caused by an excessively discharged battery, recharging devices have been developed. A satisfactory effect, however, cannot be expected for an automated factory because the exchange is not automatically carried out.
Recently, in order to solve this problem, a device has been developed which checks the discharge state of the battery being discharged and which is capable of automatically exchanging the battery. Additionally, automatic battery exchanging systems using a robot and a turning rack are known.
These systems are still in the development stages and have many problems. In addition, the structure of these systems is complicated because they use a robot and turning rack. As a result, they have no likely economic advantage because of their complexity and high installation costs.